This communication aims to make a short summary of the social control exerted on women through confinement measures, in the long term, on the current Belgian territory. It examines confinement as a privileged instrument of justice used to respond to female deviance. We study both the social group of confined women and the institutions of confinement, in order to highlight continuities/recurrences and changes on two axes: the profile of the confined women (deviant behaviour, causes of criminalisation) and the objectives of confinement (formal discourses versus practices).